Harvey Silverglate is the author of the wonderful book Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent, which exposed the threat to liberty caused by the way federal criminal laws have exploded in number but also become impossibly broad and vague. He also formerly was one of Michael Milken's lawyers. He weighs in on the dispute at UCLA law school over Lowell Milken's $10 million gift by reviewing the history of the SEC's attack on the Milkens and Drexel Burnham Lambert. He concludes:
The Milken brothers should be honored by UCLA Law School as victims of a federal prosecutorial system run amok. Instead, the younger brother – a mere bargaining chip in a Department of Justice racket – is being attacked for his willingness to confer a ten million-dollar gift to fund the “Lowell Milken Institute for Business Law and Policy.” UCLA should accept the gift with deep humility and thanks that someone with the last name Milken should have combatted cynicism and made a rather large bet that law and policy – exemplified by the white collar prosecutorial activities of the Department of Justice – might be rescued from their current sorry state.
